Accomplished documentarian Maro Chermayeff–who is repped for commercials by Workhorse Media–is debuting Circus, a six part documentary series on PBS this week. Circus was created and directed by Chermayeff and Jeff Dupre.
This is not your grandma’s circus. Then again, in another sense, it is. The documentary series, which premieres on November 3, follows a season with the Big Apple Circus, a traditional European style one-ring circus (in contrast to three-ring). It’s the only one that features “Grandma” the clown played by 58 year old New Jerseyite Barry Lubin. Chermayeff is a practitioner of cinema verite or direct cinema. She goes deep into the subculture–the people with “sawdust in their blood”–from the back lot to the big top, moving from town to town, pitching tents, rehearsing and performing.
“We’re not looking for the craziest most insane thing we can do,” said Chermayeff, “but we find it anyway. It’s called real life and real people, and in the most normal of circumstances, the spectacular is revealed. All of our series are about characters and stories, and about finding people and capturing a world view that we otherwise wouldn’t have an opportunity to become part of. Everyone has had that fantasy about running away and joining the circus. This hasn’t changed in 40 years. This series, in a sense, is about the world of our past imaginings.”
Chermayeff and Dupre went to work on the Circus series, which was initially proposed by John Wilson, head of programming at PBS. “It’s not a children’s show, it’s about the life of the circus and what it takes to make it in that world,” said Chermayeff. “We wanted to make an adult show about true life and real people.”
In fact Chermayeff believes the circus has always been a metaphor for survival. “In the circus, if someone does a triple somersault, they are really doing a triple somersault. They are working their whole life on a continual basis to make that triple somersault every night in every show. There’s a true element of danger and risk.”
The recession even makes an appearance in this series. The market crashed while she was shooting and that underscored the precariousness of earning a living under the big top. The series, like most of Chermayeff’s work, does not have a narrator. In true verite tradition, the stories are experiential or told in the voice of the subjects themselves. The idea is to get a sense of the circus from the circus members’ perspective.
“In their mind, the circus is glorious. When you stand in the middle of the ring, you are surrounded by 2000 people. It’s absolutely mesmerizing. It’s the circus that’s in their mind. It’s the circus behind the circus.”
Chermayeff captured this visceral feel with a high speed Phantom HD camera, the type of expensive equipment routinely used on big budget feature films. Circus was shot at hundreds of frames per second, which helped push the film look into a “hyper-reality.” The production also used Varicams, handicams and HD helmet cams for the trapeze artists. “You can actually see what it feels like when a body is coming at you and you have to catch that body and hurl that body.”
Chermayeff’s credits include other notable series for PBS. She directed all 10 episodes of Carrier, which chronicles life aboard the nuclear-powered aircraft carrier USS Nimitz. Mitchell Block, president of Carrier Project, Inc., conceived Carrier and co-created and executive produced the series with Chermayeff, and Bruce Davies, Mel Gibson and Nancy Cotton at Icon Productions. Carrier Project, Inc., produced the series with Icon Productions. The program, which premiered on PBS in ’08, was honored with a Creative Arts Emmy for Outstanding Cinematography/Reality Programming.
Chermayeff additionally served as one of the producer/directors of the PBS series Frontier House, in which three modern families homesteaded in the American West circa 1883.
She has collaborated closely with noted journalist and interviewer Charlie Rose, having produced and edited many of his one-hour specials. Chermayeff also was director of documentary programming at A&E for two years, and was nominated for an Emmy for her work on the series Biography. In addition to PBS and A&E, her work has appeared on HBO, TLC, Bravo, Discovery, Channel 4 in the UK and France 2.
Chermayeff currently has two films in the works with HBO’s documentary division. She’s directing Mann v. Ford, an investigative piece about a toxic waste lawsuit brought by a New Jersey Indian tribe against Ford Motor Company (“my Erin Brokovich film”), and she’s one of the creators and producers of a profile of the performance artist Marina Abramovich, who spent three months sitting in a chair in the Guggenheim Museum. Despite how it sounds, according to Ms. Chermayeff, the film is not like watching paint dry.
“She sat still and motionless for three and half months. It was physically and emotionally and every way excruciating. Marina is beyond charismatic.”
Chermayeff, who also is a founder and chairman of the MFA Program in Social Documentary at The School of Visual Arts in New York City and a former faculty member of New York University’s Graduate School of Film and Television, has worked on branded content. She spent her formative years working on feature promotion at The Kanew Company, R/Greenberg Associates and Balsmeyer & Everett, where she cut trailers and helped produce movie ads.
Disney Pledges $15 million In L.A. Fire Aid As More Celebs Learn They’ve Lost Their Homes
The Pacific Palisades wildfires torched the home of "This Is Us" star Milo Ventimiglia, perhaps most poignantly destroying the father-to-be's newly installed crib.
CBS cameras caught the actor walking through his charred house for the first time, standing in what was once his kitchen and looking at a neighborhood in ruin. "Your heart just breaks."
He and his pregnant wife, Jarah Mariano, evacuated Tuesday with their dog and they watched on security cameras as the flames ripped through the house, destroying everything, including a new crib.
"There's a kind of shock moment where you're going, 'Oh, this is real. This is happening.' What good is it to continue watching?' And then at a certain point we just turned it off, like 'What good is it to continue watching?'"
Firefighters sought to make gains Friday during a respite in the heavy winds that fanned the flames as numerous groups pledged aid to help victims and rebuild, including a $15 million donation pledge from the Walt Disney Co.
More stars learn their homes are gone
While seeing the remains of his home, Ventimiglia was struck by a connection to his "This Is Us" character, Jack Pearson, who died after inhaling smoke in a house fire. "It's not lost on me life imitating art."
Mandy Moore, who played Ventimiglia's wife on "This Is Us," nearly lost her home in the Eaton fire, which scorched large areas of the Altadena neighborhood. She said Thursday that part of her house is standing but is unlivable, and her husband lost his music studio and all his instruments.
Mel Gibson's home is "completely gone," his publicist Alan Nierob confirmed Friday. The Oscar winner revealed the loss of his home earlier Friday while appearing on Joe Rogan's... Read More